The first time I went fishing off the rocks off the back of the Yeppoon marine my mate Clayton and I started by collecting bait off the jetty. He used his light rod with a bait jig while I used the cast net to target fish like herring, mullet and garfish. After getting a few live baits we headed to the rocks where we used a running sinker rig and a medium spin outfit. I used my Rovex Aureus on a 2.1m Ugly Stick gold while my mate used a Pen Accord on a Shimano rod. The medium size bait holder Mustad hook was placed through the upper back of the live bait fish. The running sinker rig allows the baitfish to move around a bit which is very natural and appealing to fish. Time quickly passed with only a few small bites but no definite hook-ups till the light drag an the Aureus started to scream. We quickly jumped to our feat and started to tighten the drag to apply more pressure on the fish. The fish stuck to the bottom but had a few slow powerful runs which is a common characteristic of rays. We eventually surfaced it before pulling it up onto the rocks before it scraped the leader line causing it to break. The fish turned out to be a nice shovel nosed shark which flopped into a small rock pool. We took a few pictures before releasing it back into the choppy water. That was the only good fish caught off the rocks that day. It measured 70cm but hopefully will be bigger for next time.
Rhett Thorne
No comments:
Post a Comment